The VW Eos, an all-new convertible coupe, has quite a name to live up to. Anyone with a copy of Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable can quickly tell you that Eos was the Greek goddess of the dawn, who was believed to tug the sun above the horizon every morning. That must have taken some serious horsepower, not least in those early, pre-combustion days. On the VW Eos, a towbar is optional but, this being a glitzy convertible coupe, rather than some rugged caravan-hauler, not especially recommended.

This is not the first time that, casting around for a label, Volkswagen has dipped boldly - some might say hubristically - into ancient mythology. They called the ponderous, seemingly bullet-proof limo at the top of the VW range the Phaeton; the sun's son, who was, essentially, an epic joy-rider. His greatest claim to fame is that he once borrowed and crashed his dad's chariot, wiping out almost the whole of Africa in the process. I'm not sure that VW really thought that one through.

At least Eos didn't have points on her licence. Is the VW Eos a chariot of the gods, though? It would depend, presumably, how the gods felt about driving a cut-price Audi TT-alike, that being the Eos's most obvious visual reference, albeit that the Eos has longer and tamer lines and looks a touch more modest and less sure of itself than its squat cousin. There was a period, not so long ago, in film and television dramas, when characters who were moneyed and, to some important extent, feckless, would almost automatically be given an Audi TT to drive, the car serving as a handy visual shorthand for heartlessness. This is not a fate that awaits the more neutral, unaggressive Eos.

What the gods might be impressed by is the Eos's tremendous take on the electronically operated, self-peeling, hard-top roof, a device now enjoying the fast-fading autumn of its days as an exclusive and fabulously exotic accessory. Electronic tops are all over the place these days, on all manner of cars, including some pretty cheap and cheerful ones, and fairly soon we'll be greeting their public operation (the formerly joyful, unmanned springing-open of the boot, the once magical procession of body panels into the boot) with the kind of ho-hum expression with which we now acknowledge ultra-tiny mobile phones and online grocery shopping.

In the meantime, the Eos's roof must grab what attention it can. First of all it incorporates a sunroof, which, for practical reasons having to do with the unwieldiness of plate glass, is not all that easy to do in a retracting top - or certainly not in a car coming in at less than £45,000 and which isn't a Porsche. And this is not just a token, niggardly skylight either. Indeed, almost as wide and as deep as the car it sits on, the slide-and-tilt sunroof on the Eos is so spectacularly capacious that the interior could, given a wicker chair or two and a magazine tidy, usefully double as a conservatory.

In addition, in the process of breaking up and stowing itself away, the Eos's roof comprises no fewer than five sections. Apart from improving the opening procedure as a spectacle, this means that, on its journey into the boot, the roof doesn't end up requiring unfeasible amounts of overhead clearance. Which, in turn, means that operating it is something you might be prepared to practise in the privacy of your own garage.

At any rate, I can record that I put my Eos's top back on in the ungenerous confines of a multi-storey car park attached to a shopping centre, and waited, with gritted teeth, for the unmistakable sound of expensive sunroof scraping on cheap concrete. But nothing came. Clearly this is a major advance for roof on/roof off convenience.

To drive, the Eos is smooth, uncomplicated, and easy on the hands and feet, as well as on the eyes, yet without being impressively refined or startlingly powerful, which a coupe this size would generally aim to be. But this probably ought not to surprise us in a car that blends, structurally and cosmetically, bits of a VW Passat and bits of a VW Golf - cars with more modest names and ambitions.

Ancient Greeks, incidentally, used to refer to the morning dew as the "tears of Eos", believing the liquid that silvered the grass each day fell from the eyes of the goddess, destined to weep inconsolably after her son, Memnon, was rubbed out by Achilles in some kind of epic drive-by. Moving. But any similar effect produced by your VW Eos is almost certainly the result of a leak of some kind and you should probably get it looked at by an authorised repair shop.